TWIF 35: The Flatpak edition

In this edition: New automated mirror monitor, repomaker released to Flathub, unofficial F-Droid meeting at 35C3 and talk about Off-Grid Services by @_hc.

There are 11 new and 68 updated apps.

F-Droid is a repository of verified free and open source Android apps, a client to access it, as well as a whole “app store kit”, providing all the tools needed to set up and run an app store. It is a community-run free software project developed by a wide range of contributors. This is their story this past week.

Repomaker hasn’t had an official release so far, but it’s already usable, and we’ll make an official release soon. If you’re interested in trying it out before then, you can go to Flathub and install it easily on all major Linux distributions.

Talk about Off-Grid Services by @_hc

“The internet has become an essential service, and offline methods of sharing data are rapidly disappearing. Other networks are often better suited when connectivity is not available or affordable. Radios, sensors, and computing are available in the cheapest of smartphones and routers. Wind is integrating nearby/offline data exchange with the internet services that we all rely on.”

Downgraded apps

Vespucci was downgraded to 11.2.2.0 because the auto-update process accidentally pulled in a buggy beta. (See here for technical details.)

Updated apps

In total, 68 apps were updated this week. Here are the highlights:

Many changes in Suntimes 0.10.0, the most notable of which is the splitting off of the calendar integration into a separate app (see above) with the appropriate changes in required permissions. Other changes include: support for themes, theme import and export, imperial/metric switch in General Settings, support for third-party apps through a ContentProvider, and many other UI/UX changes and bugfixes.

G-Droid is an alternative app to access F-Droid repositories, and was updated from 0.3.2 to 0.4.3, with correctly formatted, translated, described and clickable permissions, a run button for installed apps, clickable tags and categories, complete and up-to-date screenshots in the correct language, new search algorithms “search harder” and “search even harder”, and several smaller UI/UX improvements and bug fixes.

My Expenses was updated from 2.9.7.1 to 2.9.8, with a redesigned account list, saving goals and credit limits, scroll to current date on app start, custom colors, budgeting, and custom currencies.

PDF Converter converts images to PDF (no internet required), and was updated from 8.4.7 to 8.5.2, now with the ability to add images to an existing PDF, easily sort images, bug fixes in image cropping and rotation, and several other bug fixes and performance improvements.

Beta updates

The following updates won’t be automatically suggested to you unless you have “Unstable updates” enabled in the F-Droid app settings, but you can expand the “Versions” tab and install them manually. Note that these are marked beta for a reason: proceed at your own risk.

F-DroidF-Droid was updated from 1.5-alpha0 to 1.5-alpha1, with UX and language cleanup of App Details.

General feedback can also be sent via Mastodon, or, if you’d like to have a live chat, you can find us in #fdroid on Freenode, on Matrix via #fdroid:f-droid.org or on Telegram. All of these spaces are bridged together, so the choice is yours. You can also join us on the forum.

Thank you for reading, and Merry Christmas on behalf of all F-Droid contributors!